International research projects coordinated by Sustainability Law, and its predecessor the Company Law Group, have been crucial for establishing, developing and broadening the SMART Network.
From Sustainable Companies to Sustainable Market Actors
The Sustainable Market Actors Network, as it was originally named, was originally based on the team involved in the Sustainable Companies Project (2010-2014), coordinated by Beate Sjåfjell. The Sustainable Companies Project had as its aim to find out how to integrate the overarching goal of sustainable development and especially its environmental dimension in the decision-making in companies. The project undertook extensive, comparative analysis of the barriers to and possibilities for environmentally sustainable companies in company law and has identified a number of barriers and suggested possible ways forward.
The project Sustainable Market Actors for Responsible Trade (SMART) ran from 2016 to 2020 and was also coordinated by Beate Sjåfjell. SMART had as an overarching objective to do research that would serve to promote global, sustainable development within a circular, low-emission economy compatible with the planetary boundaries and in line with the international development goals. The project undertook multilevel, interdisciplinary and international analyses in order to identify the barriers and possibilities for market actors’ contributions to sustainability. The project developed a broad set of reform proposals for the regulation of market actors and proposals for how business can integrate sustainability into their operations and activities, including sustainability assessments across their global value chains. The project built on the results of the Sustainable Companies Project but took it further, with the crucial support of the scholars of the Sustainable Market Actors Network.
From SMART Project to the SMART Network
Sustainability Law continues working based on the SMART Project results, and has developed a set of SMART legacy plans. An important step is to take the Sustainable Market Actors Network further as an independent, international network of sustainability-oriented researchers. We have therefore renamed it The Sustainable Market Actors Research Network, to bring out more clearly that this is an academic network. We have chosen the SMART Network as the short name, to build on the recognition of the SMART Project’s name and the SMART Project results in our further work.
We envisage many collaborative projects arising out of the SMART Network, and encourage our members to reach out to each other with new ideas.
At the University of Oslo, one of our SMART legacy projects has been Futuring Sustainable Nordic Business Models (Futuring Nordics, 2019-2023). Futuring Nordics carried on the work of SMART in the Nordic region, and was coordinated by Jukka Mähönen.
Other SMART legacy projects include the SAPIENS Network and ToNoWaste.
Scholars and institutions interested in becoming members of the SMART Network, and possible contributing actively to current and future projects, may register their interest through this web form.